CookSkinny: Spring Tortellini with Cream Sauce

I know I just posted today, but I wanted to skinny up another of our favorite recipes from the archives to each this week, and what better place to save the information than on the internet?! This pasta dish also uses asparagus and frozen peas, which are going into another of the meals from this week, so I am creating less food waste AND saving money by buying a smaller mix of ingredients!

We LOVE the Spring Tortellini with Cream Sauce. It's quick AND delicious. However, it's also 626 calories and 21 SMARTPOINTS. Holy cow! I'm going to see what I can do to skinny up this recipe. I'm no mastermind like Gina at SkinnyTaste, but I can do a few simple things to help this dish.

First of all, when I calculated the recipe using this tortellini, here is the nutritional info that I got:

Nutritional Info

• Servings Per Recipe: 4
• Amount Per Serving
• Calories: 502.6

• Total Fat: 22.5 g
• Cholesterol: 96.9 mg
• Sodium: 458.1 mg
• Total Carbs: 52.2 g
• Dietary Fiber: 3.3 g
• Protein: 23.8 g
• SmartPoints: 16

This is vastly different than the values that they posted! I'm not quite sure where the discrepancies are, or which one is more accurate. However, I went ahead and subbed fat-free half-and-half and compared the results:

Nutritional Info

• Servings Per Recipe: 4
• Amount Per Serving
• Calories: 417.5

• Total Fat: 11.9 g
• Cholesterol: 57.7 mg
• Sodium: 490.3 mg
• Total Carbs: 54.0 g
• Dietary Fiber: 3.3 g
• Protein: 24.0 g
• SmartPoints: 12

Using the fat-free half and half made a HUGE difference! I also tried subbing the sausage tortellini by this whole wheat kind:

Nutritional Info

• Servings Per Recipe: 4
• Amount Per Serving
• Calories: 423.4

• Total Fat: 12.5 g
• Cholesterol: 79.9 mg
• Sodium: 647.3 mg
• Total Carbs: 52.4 g
• Dietary Fiber: 3.3 g
• Protein: 27.2 g
• Smart Points: 12

So, using whole wheat pasta doesn't change the points value. The calories increased slightly, as did the fat, cholesterol, AND sodium. The carbs were reduced, and fiber surprisingly stayed the same. Protein did increase by a few grams. 

I'll be sticking to my tasty sausage tortellini, thanks :P

I will be making the recipe this week with fat-free half and half for sure! If you're wondering, we are also using a few other recipes from SkinnyTaste, other than the pesto I listed in my last post: 

Grilled Flank Steak w/ Tomatoes, Red Onion, and Balsalmic

Rosemary Chicken Salad with Avocado and Bacon

Until next time, 

Mischief (and appetite!) Managed.

CookSmarts? CookSkinny!

I've recently been trying this new "subscription" service called CookSmarts. Unlike other services, you don't receive anything in the mail, but it is entirely online. It is a service that gives you four recipes per week, ususally with intertwining ingredients. This creates less food waste because you plan your meals. It also gives you a list of things you can chop/prep on Sunday to make the meal cooking during the week SO much faster. If you're a novice to cooking and/or meal planning, they also have helpful videos of how to do some of the techniques they mention in the recipes. If you're interested in signing up, you can click here.


Well, I've SUPER enjoyed these meals! It's been really nice to change up our usual food rotation so much! Unfortunately, I have gained THREE POUNDS since their meals aren't as "skinny" as the meals we had been eating. So I decided to take matters into my own hands and start to "skinny-up" some of the recipes! This week, I'm starting with the Monday meal, Oven-Baked Pesto Risotto.

Per tablespoon, their pesto comes out like this:

Nutritional Info

• Servings Per Recipe: 10
• Amount Per Serving: 1 tbsp
• Calories: 185.9

• Total Fat: 20.4 g
• Cholesterol: 0.0 mg
• Sodium: 1.0 mg
• Total Carbs: 2.1 g
• Dietary Fiber: 0.9 g
• Protein: 1.2 g
• SmartPoints: 6

Yikes!!! While I'm sure it's super delicious, this week I am going to go for a much skinnier option using my favorite food blogger, Skinnytaste.com. You can find her recipe for pesto here. Here is how her pesto rolls out, per tablespoon:

Nutritional Info

• Servings Per Recipe: 10
• Amount Per Serving: 1 tbsp
• Calories: 81.4

• Total Fat: 8.3 g
• Cholesterol: 3.2 mg
• Sodium: 74.9 mg
• Total Carbs: 0.7 g
• Dietary Fiber: 0.3 g
• Protein: 1.9 g
• SmartPoints: 3

Yeah, definitely going with the SkinnyTaste version!

The pesto was the main thing putting unnecessary calories into this dish. I was going to use chicken broth vs. chicken stock, but after checking the carton in my fridge, the chicken broth only adds about 10 calories per cup, and no fat at all!

The CookSmarts version of the risotto recipe has 626 calories, or 19 SmartPoints.
Using the skinny pesto, the risotto comes out to: 500 calories, and 15 SmartPoints. Sounds much better to me!


For the Garlic Panko Crusted Fish, I'm on the fence. I have never enjoyed fish very much unless it's literally caught that day. But when you sub chicken breast for fish, it raises the calories by nearly 200!   I am trying to decide if we are going to be brave and try the fish, sub TWO chicken breasts and butterfly them to make four (and thereby cut the chicken calories), or if I will make the vegetarian version (stuffed tomatoes) for myself and make chicken for him.

If you're wondering, with the skinny pesto the fish version turns out to be 464 calories and 14 SmartPoints. Curiously this is the same value that they claimed the regular version is... which may just be a discrepancy in brands calculated, etc.

We aren't interested in the lamb cups or the shrimp gumbo this week, so you're on your own for skinnying those up!

I hope that helps!

Mischief Managed.